Think back to your favourite story. A book you couldn’t put down or a movie you rewatch time and time again. Like all great stories, I bet it follows the following simple format. Our hero goes on a journey, faces unimaginable difficulty, but rises victorious before returning home transformed.

However as mighty as our hero is, they’ve of course had help along the way. Usually taking the form of a wise and patient sage, our hero is given support and advice. Given at the time it was needed most, this enabled them to go on and reach their full potential.

So how does this relate to inbound marketing and why is it important to the growth of your business?

Well as we step back and observe our own buying behaviour, we begin to discover that we are each on our own quest, in need of a solution to overcome the obstacles in front of us.

This means that the responsibility of being a trusted sage, rests on your shoulders. Every prospect and customer of yours is on a quest to accomplish a set of goals. It might not be clear where their journey will take them, but it’s your job to serve as a constant advisor, so your visitors can rely on you as an expert resource when they need answers most.

This is more important than ever. Why? Your educational guidance builds trust and long-term growth for both you and your visitor. Content acts as your voice. It enables you to speak one-on-one with thousands of these heroes who are looking for answers and insights on a regular basis.

The rise of conversational tools like chatbots, live chat, and social media has given us more opportunity than ever to engage in conversation. It’s as if your company can now actually be by their side, speaking directly to them as a person. This is how online content will enable you to build meaningful one-to-one relationships, and do it at scale.

To do this you have the power of context on your side. When you learn more about your audience, you have insight into their motivations, goals, obstacles and behaviours. With powerful marketing technology and a long term focus, you can further gather and leverage this insight to create and distribute content that’s timely, aligned and personalized to fit their needs.

Gone are the days of forcing people to engage with you. Instead you can now focus your time on sustainable efforts to attract the right visitors that you can educate with context, clarity and creativity, positioning you as a thought leader they’ll want to come back to.

By adopting an inbound marketing methodology in your business, your content becomes part of a cross-channel holistic experience that enables you to gather more information and learn more about each visitor.

With this relationship-focused approach to marketing, you’re not just solving for your prospects immediate needs, but allowing for further personalized content that enables long-term growth. This value and insight enables your visitors to critically examine their situation, so that they eventually arrive at the most natural conclusion.

Helping your visitors reach this conclusion positions you as a resource that they can return to or recommend to others. Don’t forget that the returning hero will tell stories of their adventures and position you as the sage who can help a new group of heroes.

Let’s bring this all together. What does inbound marketing really mean?

Inbound marketing is about creating one-to-one relationships that have a lasting impact on your visitors and your brand. How do you do this? You attract prospects and customers to your site through helpful content. You engage with them using conversational tools like email and chat and by providing value once they land there. And finally, you delight by continuing to act as an empathetic advisor and expert.

These steps form a single methodology: attract, engage, delight, and repeat. This cycle or “flywheel” of developing meaningful relationships will power your company’s growth by creating more opportunity to sell and service down the line.

It’s important to remember that while your customer may be the hero, you have the opportunity to educate and inspire them along the way. Ultimately, each of your teams--marketing, sales and service--should be aligned around the customer. This allows for relationships to span across departments and provides the opportunity for everybody to win together.